Page 16 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
I huff a laugh I don’t feel. “Occupational hazard.”
There’s a beat where we could stand in this aisle and rebuild something out of jokes and product demos, pretend this isn’t a crater site. She shifts her weight, and a hand goes to the small of her back without her noticing. The protective reflex in me roars awake—fix the posture, fetch a chair, carry her to a vehicle, plot a route with the least potholes. None of those are my lanes anymore.
I check the clock without looking at my watch. I don’t belong here longer than it takes to be polite and not make a mess. “I should get out of your way.”
“You don’t have to—” she starts, then closes it with a nod that says maybe I do.
“Congratulations,” I say, and I mean it, even if the word scrapes on the way out. “Really.”
Her mouth tips. It doesn’t quite stick as a smile, but it tries. “Thanks.”
I back out without knocking over a single llama (professional pride), tip two fingers to the sister (who looks like she’d put me in time-out if I breathed wrong near the swaddles), and step into the cold. The door bell chimes behind me as I leave.
Outside, Main Street carries on: delivery truck idling, a kid in a puffer jacket skipping over sidewalk seams, wreaths going up crooked over storefronts. I walk two blocks because standing still makes my head too loud.
The extended-stay hotel off Fifth greets me with lobby citrus and carpet that has seen too many hockey tournaments. My room is a rectangle of neutrality: two-burner stovetop, a couch pretending to be a bed, a bed pretending to be comfortable. I drop my pack, key my weapon into the safe, and stand staring at the window while the heater wheezes itself brave.
Seven months ago I watched her tilt her head at a sky full of stars and tell me she didn’t do complicated. We both lied. Or we both wanted it to be true. Now I’m in a room that smells like other people’s dinners and she’s across town building a registry with a man named Freddy who, for all I know, is exactly what she needs—someone who does do complicated, or who doesn’t call it that when it’s love.
My jaw aches. I didn’t realize I was clenching it.
I sit on the edge of the bed, pull out my phone, and do the thing you do when you’re not the guy but you’re still the guy who needs intel: I search.Freddy Melanie Mason Saint Pierce. Addpregnant. Pullpregnant. Addengaged. Nothing meaningful. No soft-focus announcement posts. No brunch photos with captions about “our little pumpkin.” I get a Freddy Mercury tribute page, a Freddy Fred who makes candles in Oregon, a local story about a lost cat named Fredo.
I refine, tighten, broaden. Business registry. Marriage licenses. Public tags. Private profiles. I am very good at this when I shouldn’t be. Still nothing. It shouldn’t make me feel better. It doesn’t. It just makes me feel… off. Like the data’s there but the query string is wrong.
Or like I’m rationalizing because the alternative is going back to that store, looking her in the eyes, and asking with an ounce of grace instead of a mouthful of fear.
My phone buzzes.
DUKE: Brief at 1900. Client added a holiday party to the itinerary. Tux level. Don’t shoot me.
Copy, I’ll source a penguin suit.
When I took this job, I thought… maybe I could casually send Melanie a text and reconnect. I didn’t expect this.
I wasn’t lying about my job. I’m here until after the holidays. Asher sent Duke and I to trail a popular influencer: Diva Dame (real name classified) to watch for tails. Duke’s been great to work with, and once we arrived in Saint Pierce, Dean Maddoxadded Gunner Slade to our duo, because Gunner’s familiar with the area.
I toss the phone onto the nightstand and lie back, shoes still on. The ceiling has the kind of texture that makes you think of popcorn and sublets. I stare at it until the heater clicks off and the room goes quiet enough to hear my pulse.
“Good ol’ Freddy,” I say to the empty air, trying the phrase on for size. It doesn’t fit.
I shut my eyes because the alternative is seeing a baby store window every time I blink. Sleep takes the long way around. When it finally gets here, it looks like a deck in Colorado, a blanket that smells like peppermint, and a laugh I can’t unlearn if I try.
Morning will feel cleaner. It always does. There’s a route, a client, a schedule. There are things to be done that don’t care about the past tense of a kiss.
For now, there’s just the quiet hum of a room I don’t live in and the echo of a question I asked the wrong way.
6
Melanie
By ten a.m., my living room looks like a baby store sneezed. There’s tissue paper everywhere, a suspicious number of Allen wrenches that all look identical, and a crib in twelve languages that insists step four should be obvious. Nothing about step four is obvious.
Amelia sits cross-legged on the rug with the instruction booklet and a highlighter, like she’s prepping for the SATs: Crib Edition. “Okay,” she says, tapping the page. “We need dowels A through C, screws D, E, and possibly F if your baby is advanced.”
“My baby is extremely advanced,” I say, fishing in a hardware bag that might actually be a portal to Narnia. “He or she already has opinions. Yesterday they kicked every time I played the ‘90s playlist but booed a cooking podcast.”
Amelia smirks. “Taste. I approve. Hand me an E.”
